http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705395501/My-grandfathers-memories-of-Pearl-Harbor.html?pg=all
I want to first start off by writing; my grandfather, Gordon Elmer
Douglass was a very humble man. He never bragged about his service in
the navy. He never bragged about the experiences that allowed him to
survive the attack on Pearl Harbor. My grandfather would probably be
embarrassed that I’m writing this. I write this to honor him and to
honor the sacrifices made by all those who fought tyrany in World War
II. I write this to honor the memory of those who died at Pearl Harbor
and the 429 shipmates of my Grandfather who went down with the “Okie”.
Roger Douglass, December 7, 2011 Gordon Elmer Douglass was born
September 30, 1918 in the small mining town of Eureka, Utah. His father
was Samuel Douglass and mother was Pearl McClellan Douglass. Grandpa
Douglass was very generous to me. About a year before he died he helped
me pay off a large debt that I owed. I could never repay him but I named
my first born boy, Gordon Roger Williams Douglass, after him. Grandpa
Douglass was from a generation that has been named The Greatest
Generation because of the sacrafices their generation made to the United
States of America to make it a better place. This was a generation that
suffered through The Great Depression and World War II. December 12,
1940, my Grandfather was commissioned Ensign in the United States Navy
and was assigned to the USS Oklahoma which had been based at Pearl
Harbor six days earlier. The USS Oklahoma was a World War I era ship
that had been commissioned May 2, 1916. She was modernized between 1927
and 1929 and was made famous in 1936 for rescuing U.S. citizens from the
Spanish Civil War in 1936. This is my grandfather’s story, in his own
words: “I’ve always had a good memory for people, and at a church
fireside I saw a fellow who looked like Keith Taylor. I looked at his
right hand and he was missing his thumb, so then I knew it was Keith. He
didn’t recognize me until I introduced myself to him. I said that he
hadn’t seen me since I was 13 in 1932, because that is when I moved to
Salt Lake. He said, “You haven’t seen me since I was 8, because that is
when I moved away.” He seemed quite excited about meeting someone from
home and he gave me his card. He said that he now had a large room with
two beds, and if I ever needed to stay in town overnight, to call him on
the phone. On December 6, I had the coding room watch from noon until
4:00 PM. I thought that if the boat to shore was late that I might still
have time (to go see Keith.) I ran to my room and changed clothing, but
by the time I got to the gangway, the boat was on its way to the
officers landing. We were never allowed to call a boat back, so I just
went back to my room, and felt sorry for myself. I had notified the duty
officer and the wardroom that I was going ashore. Now I notified the
steward that I would be aboard for dinner. As I walked into the
wardroom, Ensign Stern was playing the record Perfidia on the Victorola.
He asked me if I was going to stay aboard ship. I replied that I was,
and he asked me if I would stand by for him so that he could go ashore. I
agreed, so he called his duty officer, who declined his request because
I was not a qualified engineering officer. I lay down on my bed to rest
before changing back to my uniform. I was just settled down and almost
asleep, when the Officer on Deck announced that in 10 minutes an extra
boat would be leaving the USS Maryland, which was tied to the Okie’s
starboard side. I jumped up to go ashore. Then I thought, no I’ll just
stay aboard now. I became restless though. Whispers came to me saying,
“Gordon, you don’t get enough exercise. Go ashore, go out on a date,
have some fun.” I said, “Okay, okay.” I jumped up and went to my wall
safe. I don’t know why, but I removed all my money from my safe
($280.00). I put $30.00 back, which was enough to pay my mess bill. This
was an odd thing for me to do, because I never carried more than $28.00
with me. I packed a bag with shoes, socks, trousers and shirt. I took
the extra bag of clothes so that I could go on a hike if I wanted. Then I
ran topside and arrived just in time to board the extra liberty boat.
As soon as I got to town I went to the mission home, changed into the
clothing that I had in the bag, and called up to ask Roseanne to come on
a hike with me. She countered by inviting me to dinner first. By the
time we had finished dinner, we decided, instead, to go to a move. The
movie theater was not far from her house, so we walked to the movie. We
passed the Waikiki Ward and the LDS Mission Home on the way. As we got
in front of the Mission Home, she asked me if I were going to church in
the morning. I said “Yes,” and I immediately thought of the invitation
that Keith Taylor had given me. I asked her to excuse me for a minute. I
went into the mission home and phoned Keith. The phone rang several
times and I was just about to hang up and he answered. He hesitated when
I asked him if I could stay with him, but he finally said, “Okay.” The
reason Keith had hesitated having me come was because he had lost his
big room and was now in a small room with just one single bed. He also
told me that before I phoned, he was on his way to town and had
forgotten something. He came back just as the phone was ringing. Keith
and I rose early on December 7, 1941. He taught a Sunday School class at
a small branch of the LDS Church, which overlooked a small part of the
entrance to Pearl Harbor. His class ended at 8:00 AM. When we came out
of the building, we could hear explosions from far away. There were
puffs of smoke in the air. Someone asked me what was going on. I replied
that it must be army maneuvers of some sort, because the navy didn’t
have anything scheduled for today. How dumb could I be? I had been so
critical of our captain for not being vigilant, and now I was as bad as
he. Army trucks and men were traveling in long lines on the road. An
army guard kept our car from the highway until all of the army convoy
had passed by. We were in President Jensen’s car and his radio was on,
but all that we could hear was static, so he turned the radio off. When
we arrived at the mission home, Keith went into the kitchen where the
elders were talking and I went to the bedroom and changed into my suit.
One of the elders came in where I was changing clothes and said, “Do you
know that we are at war?” This elder was quite a gullible fellow who
was the recipient of many pranks, and I assumed that Keith was pulling
his leg. I said, “Yea.” He said, “Well, what are you going to do?” I
said, I’m going to put my suit on and go to church.” I then said that
Keith was just kidding him. He then said, “Well Keith may be kidding,
but the radio announcers are not.” In the kitchen the elders were
huddled around the radio and the announcer kept saying, “The Japanese
have attacked Pearl Harbor. All service men report to your units and all
civilians stay off of the streets.” I threw my tie over my head,
slipped on my shoes without tying them and ran out into the middle of
the street. I commandeered the first car to come my way. It was a taxi
and six other servicemen were in it. These town taxis were not allowed
on the base, so he dropped us off at the Alexander Young Hotel, without
collecting our fares, and proceeded out to find more service men. The
next taxi took us to the naval base. The guard didn’t allow the taxi on
the base. We had to get out of the taxi, identify ourselves at the gate
and walk to our various locations on the Naval Base. It took a long time
to get through he gate because our ID’s were checked more closely than
they ever had been before. There were thirty or forty officers and men
waiting to get into the base. There was a big long sheet of very black
smoke out in the bay. As I ran to the officers boat landing I heard one
sailor holler to another that the black smoke was coming from the
Arizona, and that the Oklahoma was sunk. My heart sank with the ship. I
was supposed to be on the ship with the 81 men in my division. When I
arrived at the Officer’s Club Landing, I looked over to where the Okie
was berthed, and I saw a mast through the smoke. The Okie isn’t sunk
after all! A motor launch came to the landing and the Coxswain announced
that he would take all officers to their ships, so I boarded the
launch. One of the officers was rip-roaring drunk. He kept saying or
rather crying or sobbing, over and over again, “Why the dirty rotten
little yellow sons of B’s!” We went to the right and passed the ship of
the drunken officer. The ship’s Officer of the Deck refused to allow him
to come aboard. He said that they had enough to cope with without
having a hopeless drunk on their hands. So we had to endure the endless
cries of the drunken officer. In the moments of stress, I had forgotten
that the Okie was tied up to the USS Maryland. It was the mast of the
Maryland which I had seen through the smoke. We passed by the Okie and
indeed it was bottom up. As we passed by, in my mind’s eye, I could see
the 81 men in the “C Division,” down in the depths of the sea,
struggling for air and floundering in the dead air spaces. I didn’t know
until later that there were no dead air spaces. Our super efficient new
captain had left all the compartments open so that we would be ready
for a possible inspection on Monday, December 8, 1941. Because of the
compartments being open, the ship was sunk in 11 minutes. A group of
low-flying torpedo planes dropped three torpedoes into the port side of
the Okie. One of these torpedoes went into the radio shack (my battle
station) and exploded. A fourth torpedo followed in the wake of that one
and exploded right in the radio shack. I reflected upon the events of
December 6, 1941. If I hadn’t met Keith Taylor at the fireside, if I
hadn’t listened to the promptings telling me to go ashore, if Ensign
Stern’s duty officer had approved me to stand by for him, if Roseanne
hadn’t asked me if I were going to church just as we passed the mission
home, if Keith hadn’t forgotten something so that he had to return to
where his phone was, if he had told me that he didn’t really have room
for me now that he had lost his second bed, then I would have been
aboard ship and would have gone to my battle station where two torpedoes
exploded. We lost all of our battleships in one fell swoop. Fortunately
for us none of our aircraft carriers were in port. The carriers were
scheduled to be in port, but for various reasons were not there. Our
loss of manpower was very severe. The war was to be waged with aircraft
and submarines. These old captains and admirals were forced into
accepting air warfare, because their old battleships were now gone.
These old battleships were restored and used later in the war to shell
some of the Japanese islands. The number two, 2-gun turret was taken
from the USS Oklahoma and installed on the USS Nevada. The number two,
2-gun turret was taken from the USS Arizona and also installed on the
USS Nevada. These guns were fired by the USS Nevada against Iwo Jima and
other islands. So the entire battleship force, which was destroyed at
Pearl Harbor, managed to participate in some manner in the war against
Japan. My Grandfather, Gordon Elmer Douglass’ story was originally
published December 5, 2006 in the Red Rock Reporter (Kanab, Utah). The
article was written by my uncle Kent D. Douglass. I have borrowed
heavily from my uncle’s story. Being that December 7, 2011 is the 70th
anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I wanted to remember not just
my grandfather, but all those who have served this greatest nation on
earth in all wars from The Revolutionary War to Afghanistan. It is my
prayer that God keep us free from tyrany and oppression and that great
men rise up once again to make sacrifices that will benefit not just the
United States, but all people of Earth.
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